Editor’s note: This is the final entry in a four-part series on The Ultimate Land Use Study Tour, an educational tour that examined innovative land use implementation tools in Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The tour was coordinated by UW-Extension and took place Oct. 15-20. There were 50 participants from Wisconsin. This article was written by Dick Cates, a beef producer, member of the DATCP citizen Board of Directors and director of the Wisconsin School for Beginning Dairy and Livestock Farmers.

By 1982, Gene Garber had watched hundreds of suburban homes be built in his rural township of Elizabethtown, Lancaster County, Pa. To Garber, the sprawl was “unconscionable.” On Dec. 28 of that year, he became the first to preserve a Pennsylvania farm by offering his development rights to the Lancaster Farmland Trust, gratis. We visited with Gene in the hay mow on his poultry and diversified livestock farm on the afternoon of our tour through Lancaster County. He told us simply, that someone had to be first.
Thursday, November 27, 2008 8:44 PM CST

Garber is chair of the Lancaster County Agricultural Preserve Board. A man of remarkable resolve, he has served as chair since 1984. (And, yes, this is the same Gene Garber, the relief pitcher for the Atlanta Braves who ended Pete Rose’s 44-game hitting streak 30 years ago.)

Garber came home from his “other job” in the late 1980s and took up the charge of working land preservation with a passion. He told us that preserving farmland is the best economic development investment his county has ever made. When development is targeted and planned, everyone wins: a streamlined process for developers can be put in place; the public tax burden for infrastructure and services that haphazard sprawl demands is greatly reduced; and farmers and agribusiness know that the land will always be in agriculture so long-term investments in infrastructure are made, which further strengthen the county and state economy.

When folks in Pennsylvania talk about their “farmland preservation program” they are talking about a multi-tiered process, not actually a single program. At the heart of the process is education and planning at the local level with all stakeholders at the table: good representation by farmers, rural and urban constituents, developers, and government leaders. Zoning, as in so many townships and counties in Wisconsin, is the first tool that is applied, and areas can be designated exclusive ag, residential, commercial, and so on. The next step is the determination of “urban growth areas,” that is, areas where future growth is to be targeted. Some communities in Wisconsin engage in an urban growth area planning process.

The following step is voluntary: land owners not located within urban growth area have the opportunity, the choice, to sell their development rights to the county Agricultural Preserve Board, to a private land trust, or both in some combination.

Many will ask: If land is zoned agricultural, what is the need for a PDR/PACE program? We all know from experience that zoning change “happens.” As county board members and land owners change, zoning changes are made, often through heated controversy that ends up dividing members of a community for a long time to come. Unlike plat zoning boundaries, PDRs/PACEs are binding legal obligations held in perpetuity. They can only be reversed after 25 years by the entity that holds the PDR/PACE, “if the land is no longer viable for agriculture.”

It is important to be clear: PDRs/PACEs are not a handout to farmland owners; they are a commercial transaction that involves the purchase and sale of private property rights, specifically, the right to sell farmland for development.

Rus Redding, deputy director of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, spoke to us about his state’s 1988 legislation that established the Agriculture Conservation Easement Purchase Program that now has protected more farmland than any other state-level PDR/PACE program in the country, more than 400,000 acres across Pennsylvania as of July 2008. The first easements were purchased in 1989.

Pennsylvania statute gives each county the authority to create its own County Agricultural Preserve Board. Now, 57 of 67 counties have an Agricultural Preserve Board. These boards are overseen by a state board with commissioners appointed by the governor. Counties can post bonds to raise the money to purchase development rights from willing land owners. No referendum is required. County residents pay for the bonds as a part of their county tax obligation. Lancaster County presently has an $8 million farmland preservation bond posted. With a population of a half a million people, the average tax burden on a household of four is less than $100 annually. There are certainly other ways to finance farmland preservation; some we heard from suggested that the funds could be raised with a land transfer tax, sales tax, or by other means.

But what Redding told us that is truly most notable, and applicable to Wisconsin’s future is this: Investment in agricultural development has tremendous support in the Pennsylvania legislature among urban representatives since farmland preservation was enacted in the state. The sound reasoning is, if citizens are going pay to preserve farmland, then the state best do all it can to help keep agriculture strong and growing.

On Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Working Lands (WLI) Proposal is a draft that summarizes the up-to-date recommendations of the WLI Steering Committee, previously convened by the DATCP Secretary Rod Nilsestuen. The draft proposal has been informed and adapted over time, by all that has been learned from our Eastern friends, and Wisconsin citizen input on the local level.

The WLI Steering Committee proposals for how to maintain and optimize working lands in Wisconsin include:

- Expand and simplify current farmland preservation tax credit; an easy to understand flat tax credit schedule is established

- Create pilot “Agricultural Enterprise Areas” (AEAs). These are areas with significant agricultural investment which would be locally-determined to have a high priority for agricultural use; agreements would be in place (a minimum of) 15 years. Potential societal benefits with AEAs are both economic and environmental. Farmers may receive tax credits under farmland preservation agreements.

- Revitalize the current farmland preservation program: eliminate farmland preservation agreements outside of AEA (existing agreements will remain in effect until their scheduled termination date); update county farmland preservation plan standards and farmland preservation zoning ordinance standards (grants will be available for local planning); replace minimum residential lot size requirements with maximum residential density standards for farmland preservation zoned land; and streamline procedures and approvals and increases flexibility for local governments to ensure effective farmland protection

- Create a program for the Purchase of Agricultural Conservation Easements (PACE); authorizes DATCP to award grants to local governments or other entities - up to 50 percent of the cost to acquire an easement - to preserve working land

- Land owners who participants will, of course, be required to be in compliance with the statewide agricultural performance standards for nutrient (including manure) management, soil loss (“T”), and water resource protection.

The American Farmland Trust launched the Campaign for Wisconsin Farm and Forest Lands earlier this year to help mobilize public support for the Working Lands Initiative. Among other things, AFT will be hosting local land-use workshops for land owners and the general public. The first workshops will be held in December in conjunction with the Wisconsin Towns Association, state department of agriculture and many local partners. (See http://www.farmland.org or http://www.wisctowns.com for more information.)

Coming together

On the final morning of our tour through Pennsylvania, we were provided an opportunity of a lifetime, a chance to visit Gettysburg National Military Park. It was here, of course, on these hallowed grounds almost a century and a half ago, after a three-day battle and 50,000 American casualties, that President Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous address which has stood the test of time. Lincoln asked those who stood before him to be “dedicated to the great task remaining before us….that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” President Lincoln was speaking to all Americans, in eternity.

We learned a life-long lesson in Pennsylvania: When citizens come to the table, stay engaged for the long haul and forge a common vision, government of, by, and for the people is ever inspiring, and the outcome enduring. So it is for us to dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work of protecting and preserving our working lands in Wisconsin. This is a hopeful and worthy challenge; let’s get to it.

Please get involved; our future depends on it.

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